New 40th anniversary edition of ST:TMP novelisation?

[Therin of Andor]

Coming in a trade paperback edition (for October)?

PS. Looks like there will be an audiobook of it as well!

https://www.simonandschuster.com/bo...xt6fBUDpetDoeM6JSQV9JmReuhDKRbHj-h8OGv7Vut1Aw
https://www.simonandschuster.com/bo...xt6fBUDpetDoeM6JSQV9JmReuhDKRbHj-h8OGv7Vut1Aw

 

[Daddy Todd]

Fascinating!

 

[Therin of Andor]

I hope they catch the error in the first mention of Vice Admiral Lori Ciana (mistyped as "Ciani"), and Admiral Kirk's omission of Sulu's name in his introduction.

 

[Stevil2001]

Neat! I hope we learn more details soon.

 

[David Weller]

Pre-ordered.

I might have read this in the 80s but I can’t remember.

 

[Reanok]

Interesting news that they're reprinting the first Star trek movie novel.

 

[Ronald Held]

Just a reprint and no new/altered content?

 

[David Weller]

I was thinking that S&S should reprint older novels when there are gaps in the new novels schedule.

 

[seigezunt]

I wonder who's reading the audiobook. And if it will include the infamous footnote where Kirk addresses all the K/S rumors.

How I hope they could get Shatner to read this part.

 

[Leto_II]

^ ...Ah, Gene. Never stop reaching for that rainbow.

 

[seigezunt]

Not to mention the love instructors.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Between the TMP novelization and some of the background material for NextGen (like the description of Dr. Crusher and his thoughts on the Ferengi), I get the impression that Roddenberry would have happily made Star Trek porn if given the opportunity.

 

[Christopher]

Between the TMP novelization and some of the background material for NextGen (like the description of Dr. Crusher and his thoughts on the Ferengi), I get the impression that Roddenberry would have happily made Star Trek porn if given the opportunity.

The one feature film Rodenberry produced other than TMP was Roger Vadim's R-rated sex comedy Pretty Maids All in a Row, which had a fair amount of nudity and sexual content. His TV pilot Spectre also goes to some pretty racy places, especially in the overseas cut with added nudity and bacchanalia. It's interesting that both films feature characters who reflect Roddenberry's own promiscuous sexual appetites but who turn out to be villains. I wonder, did he just do that to appease the censors so he could get away with depicting such characters, or did it reflect some personal ambivalence toward his own proclivities?

 

[JD]

I was just looking around on the S&S site and I somehow managed to miss this.
I have to admit, I've never read this one, and I have kind of mixed about whether I want to or not. I am curious to try out the one Trek novel written by Gene Roddenberry himself, but from what people have said on here, it sounds like he put some very strange ideas into it.

 

[Christopher]

I have to admit, I've never read this one, and I have kind of mixed about whether I want to or not. I am curious to try out the one Trek novel written by Gene Roddenberry himself, but from what people have said on here, it sounds like he put some very strange ideas into it.

I find it an intriguing exercise in futurism, since he goes into more depth about 23rd-century Earth and its culture and technology, with stuff we never saw on the show or in the movies, like the huge dam across the Straits of Gibraltar, or the comm implant in Admiral Kirk's brain, or holo-communication a lot like Discovery's only more solid-looking. I don't find its few references to a more sexually open future to be problematical; they're very much in tune with a lot of science fiction of the era, in the wake of the Sexual Revolution (see The Entropy Effect and its talk of group marriages, for one rather tame example). Although certainly his portrayal of Deltans as a people whose advanced sexuality could addict and mentally damage humans was another iteration of the same "female sexuality is a dangerous lure" trope that he'd previously employed with Orion women and Nona in "A Private Little War" (and in the very sexist opening narration to that TV-lawyer pilot he did with DeForest Kelley in the early '60s).

 

[Desert Kris]

I was just looking around on the S&S site and I somehow managed to miss this.
I have to admit, I've never read this one, and I have kind of mixed about whether I want to or not. I am curious to try out the one Trek novel written by Gene Roddenberry himself, but from what people have said on here, it sounds like he put some very strange ideas into it.

It may depend on how you feel about the movie. There's good and bad with it. There are moments where it is as if the writing is fighting itself, and some of the prose digressions are blamed on the point of view character (so Kirk is made to seem absent minded more than felt right).

The Enterprise comes across as more dynamic in motion, fast and easily manueverable, different from the majestic motion depicted in the movie. The novelization may have insight into how conversations played out in earlier drafts. There are alternative perspectives on what V'ger is, physically and conceptually. And Dr. McCoy contributes medical knowledge to the analysis of V'ger during there excursion off the ship. And the material Christopher mentions as well are interesting expanded material.

 

[The Wormhole]

Between the TMP novelization and some of the background material for NextGen (like the description of Dr. Crusher and his thoughts on the Ferengi), I get the impression that Roddenberry would have happily made Star Trek porn if given the opportunity.

And that is what Gene's Vision truly is.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Although certainly his portrayal of Deltans as a people whose advanced sexuality could addict and mentally damage humans was another iteration of the same "female sexuality is a dangerous lure" trope....

Dare we hope for a matching trade reprint of "Ex Machina" one day...?

 

[Therin of Andor]

A few years ago, I was trying to clarify why I seemed to recall more factoids about Vice Admiral Lori Ciana than other TrekBBS members remembered. It was about 4am and I dug out my 1979 Futura (Australasia) edition, with eight pages of gorgeous, captioned, colour plates.


TMP colour plates 2 and 3 by Ian McLean, on Flickr

And then I realized that both the UK and Australian novelizations of TMP had a few additional lines in them, when compared to the US editions. Extra info is in caps:

"Kirk fought to keep from screaming obscenities. It was Lori THERE. Sonak, too, but what was Lori doing up here? SHE MUST HAVE TAKEN A TEMPORARY RANK REDUCTION TO FILL THE ZENO-PSYCHOLOGY VACANCY ABOARD. AND NOW She was dying. And he was helpless to stop it." [Page 56, UK/Aust ed.; page 65, US ed.]

A minor change:

"Starfleet in THREE minutes..." [Page 56, UK/Aust ed].

Not "five..." [Page 39, US ed.]

I was sure there was at least one more minor addition in the early chapters, but I haven't found it again. (An unabridged audio will be fun to use as a read-along using the Futura edition!) The back cover blurbs are also very different:

UK/Aust ed.:
"It came from an unexpected quarter of the galaxy.

"It ignored all attempts to communicate with it.

"And it annihilated all opposition with energy bolts of unimaginable ferocity.

"Computer projections showed that it would enter the solar system in precisely three days.

"The USS Enterprise, refitting in dry dock, was the only craft that Starfleet Command could send to intercept the Cloud in time..."

***
US ed.:
"The Great Bird of the Galaxy writes a Star Trek novel!

"The writer/producer who created Mr. Spock and all the other Star Trek characters - who invented the Starship Enterprise, who gave the show its look, its ideals - puts it all together again here in this first Star Trek novel!

"Their historic 5-year mission is over. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, all the crew have scattered to other jobs or other lives. Now, they are back together again on a fabulously refitted USS Enterprise as an incredibly destructive POWER threatens Earth and the human race."

 

[Saul]

This is a nice surprise. I hadn't thought it would be popular enough to garner a 40th Anniversary edition.
But really, what I want is to see is 'The God Thing' released with this.